We see what we want to see. I’m
not talking about the power of the critic, but about the general way in
which human perception works. Sometimes we simply fail to notice
things that we’re not prepared for: witness how few reviewers have
anything to say about the reunification of Germany with regard to
Marius von Mayenburg’s The Stone,
writing only about the Nazi-era injustices, when his entire point is
that the reunification has, if not led to a comparable number and
extent of iniquities with regard to property, then at least perpetuated
and compounded a number of such wrongs, and that the German national
psyche is as reluctant to address these continuing problems as it is to
exhume some of the everyday nastinesses of Nazidom. But we aren’t
primed to spot such an issue, so we don’t register it.

The strange, perverse thing is that sometimes what we want to see is
something that we don’t like. This issue contains at least two
spectacular examples: the alleged racism of Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice and the
alleged anti-Semitism of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children. Now, I
have to admit right at the start that I’m on very shaky ground here,
since I have seen neither play (the National Theatre, perhaps with
deliberate caution, has programmed the repertoire schedule of England People so erratically that
the first time it’s performed on an evening when I’m not already booked
is a month or so hence). But each has generated a remarkable
brouhaha, and every so often the two have been linked.

Polarised

To take Churchill’s play first, it seems that she has at the least been
guilty of a rash act of metonymy, by using the word “Jewish” in her
title when what she is criticising is the current Israeli government
policy. It’s easy to use this terminological sloppiness to claim
that her point is not political but anti-Semitic. I don’t for a
minute believe that’s actually the case. However, those who say
that the play is an example of how anti-Semitism is becoming more
tolerated and thus legitimised are, in a way, addressing what I think
is Churchill’s real point, which is that the mainstream of political
discourse on the subject of Israel and Palestine has become
increasingly polarised. Her script consists of a number of
suggestions to “Tell her…” or not to tell her, the “her” being an
imaginary child in, one presumes, Israel, possibly under attack as the
adult characters are speaking. These proposals grow more extreme
through the play, just as the debate has grown more extreme rather than
less in recent years. Still, I despaired when I saw the moderate
unionist and nationalist parties in my native Northern Ireland being
eclipsed by the more extreme DUP and Sinn Féin, but within a
very few years we saw what had previously seemed absurdly implausible,
a power-sharing government headed by Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness
in such an affable combination that they became irreverently known as
“the Chuckle Brothers”. There may yet be hope for the Middle East.

The kerfuffle about England People
Very Nice has been the other side of the same coin. The
Quote of the Fortnight opposite [in the published edition] gives a
quick sketch of the objections of Hussain Ismail, apparently a theatre
practitioner from Bethnal Green, the district of east London where
Richard Bean has set his play; Ismail’s Guardian blog article seemed to
suggest that Bean’s play insults all other nationalities ever to have
settled in Britain as a pretext in order that he might also insult
contemporary Muslims. That strikes me as a bit extreme. The
meeting with Nicholas Hytner, which Veronica was anticipating, was
reported after the fact in terms of Ismail’s outrage at being
patronised and at the NT’s refusal to apologise or to allow him to
complain that the play is racist (even as he proceeded to make that
very same complaint at some length on various newspaper pages).
The account I heard from sources close to the National suggest a rather
different picture. I’m told that Ismail and his delegation (which
included a representative from the Respect political party, a grouping
which seems to rely increasingly on east London sectarianism for its
appeal) turned up demanding a public debate about the play, only to be
told by Hytner that one had already been scheduled. Slightly
nonplussed, they demanded that it be held sooner; on being told that it
couldn’t be rearranged and publicised in time, they then affected to be
aggrieved. (I can’t help thinking at this point of the peasant in
Monty Python And The Holy Grail shouting,
“Help, help, I’m being repressed!”)

Disturbing

And yet, look at the totality of the coverage of each play, and compare
them, and it makes for some disturbing reading. One blog
commenter keenly juxtaposed Michael Billington’s comments about each:
“Bean’s new work... leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Far from
rejoicing in London's ethnic diversity, it manipulates a series of
comic stereotypes like a misanthropic 1066
and All That” versus “But Churchill also shows us how Jewish
children are bred to believe in the otherness of Palestinians and how,
for generations to come, they stand to reap the bitter harvest of the
military assault on Hamas.” Arguably these are extreme examples
of his view of each play, but I fear it’s not entirely misconceived to
suggest that he seems to be straining at a humorous gnat whilst
swallowing a polemical camel.

As I say, we see what we want to see. Quentin Letts, for
instance, sees in England People a
cowardly reluctance to come out and indict the idea of multiculturalism
as the root of our current communal unrest, because that’s the
viewpoint he expects from the NT; most other reviewers, in
contrast, reckon that that’s precisely what the playwright is
saying. And elsewhere, Tim Walker sees in Alan Bennett’s Enjoy another example of what he
condemned in his Be Near Me review
as an excess of plays with homosexual themes. I wonder what he
would consider the right amount of such plays? I don’t know Tim’s
sexual orientation, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if he turned out to be
gay and closeted? The rank hypocrisy would be too, too delicious
for words.